Noel’s Reviews > Diaries, 1910-1923 > Status Update
Noel
is on page 24 of 521
We … are held in our past and future. … Whatever advantage the future has in size, the past compensates for in weight, and at their end the two are indeed no longer distinguishable, earliest youth later becomes distinct, as the future is, and the end of the future is really already experienced in all our sighs, and thus becomes the past. So this circle along whose rim we move almost closes.
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— 5 hours, 2 min ago
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Noel’s Previous Updates
Noel
is on page 18 of 521
Externally I am a man like others, … But if I lacked an upper lip here, there an ear, here a rib, there a finger, … this would still be no adequate counterpart to my inner imperfection. This imperfection is not congenital and therefore so much the more painful to bear. For like everyone, I too have my centre of gravity inside me from birth, and this not even the most foolish education could displace.
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— 12 hours, 1 min ago
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Noel
is on page 10 of 521
I write this very decidedly out of despair over my body and over a future with this body.
When despair shows itself so definitely, is so tied to its object, so pent up, as in a soldier who covers a retreat and thus lets himself be torn to pieces, then it is not true despair. True despair overreaches its goal immediately and always, (at this comma it became clear that only the first sentence was correct).
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— 13 hours, 30 min ago
When despair shows itself so definitely, is so tied to its object, so pent up, as in a soldier who covers a retreat and thus lets himself be torn to pieces, then it is not true despair. True despair overreaches its goal immediately and always, (at this comma it became clear that only the first sentence was correct).
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But the man who stands outside of humanity “is continually starved, he has only the moment, the everlasting moment of torment which is followed by no glimpse of a moment of recovery, he has only one thing always: his pain; in all the circumference of the world no second thing that could serve as a medicine, he has only as much ground as his two feet take up, only as much of a hold as his two hands encompass, so much the less, therefore, than the trapeze artist in a variety show, who still has a safety net hung up for him below.”
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(This is something I’ve been trying to articulate for a while. In fact, I’ve already articulated it but obviously Kafka’s version is far superior. This obviously anticipates “The Hunger Artist.”)
Already, what protected me seemed to dissolve here in the city. I was beautiful in the early days, for this dissolution takes place as an apotheosis, in which everything that holds us to life fies away, but even in flying away illumines us for the last time with its human light. (p. 25; all of this is from a short story sketch)
